Garmin has been competing in the wearable market with numerous products flaunting a variety of form factors, including fitness bands, hybrid watches, and digital timepieces enhanced with GPS connectivity, but now the company has announced its first luxury smartwatch called the Garmin fēnix Chronos. The device is packed with numerous sensors and technologies for more in-depth fitness and health analysis and is wrapped in a stylish durable metal shell featuring a round dial and scratch-resistant sapphire lens.
Technically speaking the Garmin fēnix Chronos is an impressive piece of wearable technology, partly due to the fact that it has the ability to gather various types of data through a wide array of sensors, including a barometer, a compass, and an altimeter. Additionally, the official product description page claims that the watch is “packed with sophisticated training features” that can determine the wearer’s running speed, heart rate variability and beats per minute, and even estimate the maximum volume of oxygen the wearer can consume every minute. Moreover, the Garmin fēnix Chronos was designed to provide in-depth fitness data for numerous physical activities including running, swimming, skiing, rowing and more. For runners, the Garmin fēnix Chronos can show information regarding vertical oscillation and ratio, ground contact and balance (showing how much time your foot is on the ground while in the running motion in order to track your running symmetry), cadence and stride length. And speaking of swimming, the watch does have 10 ATM water-resistance rating.
As for the Garmin fēnix Chronos’ more technical characteristics, the watch measures 49 x 49 x 15 millimeters and has a 1.2-inch (30.4 millimeters) display outputting a resolution of 218 x 218 pixels. The timepiece is powered by a 180 mAh battery said to offer up to 13 hours of usage in GPS training mode, and up to 1 week of battery life in watch mode. Otherwise, the fēnix Chronos has only 32 MB of on-board storage, which is enough for accommodating a 100 hours activity data track log. It can connect to smartphones via Bluetooth 4.0 LE, it has GPS + GLONASS connectivity, and last but not least, it is offered in three variants with a different price tag for each one. The model with a leather strap costs $899.99, while the brushed stainless steel band variant is priced at $999.99. However, the top-tier model coupled with a titanium hybrid band has a price tag of $1,499.99, and needless to say, these price ranges place the fēnix Chronos in an entirely different league than most other smartwatches on the market.
